USA Dot Com is a blog covering politics and government from a conservative Christian perspective. Verne Strickland is a 50-year veteran of investigative journalism. This blog offers a take-no-prisoners style with a modicum of biting satire. Verne and his wife of 55 years, Durrene, live in Wilmington, NC.

Civitas study highlights serious NC voting flaws

RALEIGH – A new Civitas Institute study suggests North Carolina’s
Same Day Voter Registration process is seriously flawed, and even
affects those who register to vote just before the deadline.

People who register to vote and vote during Same Day Registration
(SDR) bypass the necessary address verification process — which all other
voters must undergo — when registering to vote. That’s because there is
not enough time to complete the verification process before the
certification of the election. So there are SDR voters who have had
their registrations “denied” — but only after their votes were counted
and certified.

The problem also affects people who register at the tail end of the
registration period. The State Board of Election (SBOE), however, has
done little or nothing about this situation. The Civitas Institute
conducted an examination of last-minute and SDR registrations for the
May 2012 first primary.

We chose five counties — Buncombe, Durham, New Hanover, Pasquotank
and Wake — to include in our own mailing. Our plan was to send out a
survey to voters and see how many letters would be returned as
undeliverable. We would mail to two sets of voters: First, those who
registered to vote at the end of the regular registration time, between
March 1 and April 13, 2012 (the deadline to register to vote) and,
second, those voters who registered to vote during SDR.

The first surveys were mailed on April 20 and 21 to voters who
registered to vote between March 1 and April 13, 2012 (the deadline to
register to vote). A total of 17,531 surveys were mailed; 531 were
returned to us as undeliverable — a 3.06 percent rate.

To put that in perspective, in the 90 days leading up to the 2008
General Election voter registration deadline more than 200,000 people
registered to vote. So in a General Election a return rate of 3.06
percent would number approximately 6,000 verification mailings returned
as undeliverable.

In the 2008 General Election more than 103,000 people registered to
vote using the SDR system. A return rate of 7.3 percent would mean
nearly 8,000 voter cards returned as undeliverable.

We believe that these results, extrapolated statewide, suggest that
thousands of people were improperly registered in 2008 and in every
subsequent election since 2008 – enough to swing elections. In 2008,
President Obama won North Carolina by only 14,173 votes.

“This is just one more flaw in an elections system that has numerous
other problems,” said Civitias Elections Analyst Susan Myrick. “Our
study of late registration is another indication that the General
Assembly needs to reform election laws to make sure that voting is fair
and above all suspicion.”